Mission planning is an important activity both for manned and unmanned crafts. Such planning provides a means for increasing the safety of a mission and also provides for keeping a time schedule. Mission planning is a process shortly described as the activity needed to find a route between two waypoints.
A number of constraints may be imposed on the route. For example, said route shall avoid static and dynamic threats or crafts, minimize fuel consumption, keep within predetermined spatial limits regarding flight level and position, arrive at the target at a certain point in time, having a certain velocity and a certain course. The route must also be such that the craft can travel along said route taking the physical properties of said craft into consideration regarding performance in velocity, acceleration and manoeuvrability.
It is possible to use pure analysis to describe target and constraints as a huge optimization problem, and subsequently apply techniques capable of finding a route that solves the problem. In reality this is difficult, since it would require large amounts of computational power to solve a realistic problem.
State of the art techniques include dividing the problem into several steps, which makes it possible to plan in “real time”. First, the route is planned, regardless of velocity, and subsequently the velocity is planned along the determined route.